Alive
by slytherinish
Summary: Harry's eyes focused on the diseased faces below.  He had given his life up for them once, and now it was all for nothing.  Now they were all worse than dead. HPDM.  Written for hp zombiefest.


Late on a fall evening, one year after the Dark Lord's demise, two Aurors patrolled through Wiltshire in search of a new threat. They'd gotten a report of a fresh hoard of the undead from a man who'd watched and heard a homeless boy being attacked by a creature with decaying limbs and a skeletal face. He'd said the boy had screamed for help. He'd said he'd screamed loud enough and long enough for anyone living nearby to hear.

But help hadn't come.

"Makes you sick, doesn't it?"

The other Auror glanced at her partner. "What does?"

"How selfish people can be."

She shrugged. "Yeah, I guess it does."

They trudged along in companionable silence. They couldn't Apparate. In fact, they couldn't use any kind of magic anymore. For some reason, the creatures could sense it. Instead, the Aurors had all been outfitted with Muggle weapons that most of them didn't how to use. The swarms took over London before they could be properly trained.

They were Aurors now in name alone. Crime ran rampant in most cities, and they had no authority to stop it, nor the manpower necessary to keep it under control. England belonged to the undead. Even those who hadn't been infected weren't really living anymore. How could they, when their very existence was reduced to merely trying to survive?

Most of them took it very hard, and those who didn't take the easy way out in the beginning, probably wished that they had. In the midst of the chaos, there were no heroes. People either added to it and made it worse, even if they were trying to make it better, or were too scared to do anything at all. It was hard to know which was worse.

The two Aurors stuck to the road. They were up against an enemy that wandered the ground freely, both in groups and alone. They fact that they didn't have tactical plans only made them more dangerous, because their moves were impossible to predict. The only way to know they were nearby was by the sound of their moaning and their dragging limbs.

Up ahead, they spotted a figure approaching with an unsteady gait. It stumbled towards them with its clothes torn and bloodied, and its face pale and scratched. Its silver eyes seemed sunken in, making them stand out even more. A shiver ran down one of the Aurors' spine.

"Scared?"

The male Auror looked at the other. "All of the time."

She nodded grimly and ran forward, her gun held out in front of her, loaded and cocked. All she had to do was pull the trigger and shoot the creature's brains out. This would be a routine takedown.

As she aimed, the creature staggered forward, tripping over its own limbs. She stood above it, gun pointed at the back of its head and her foot pressing down into its back, which was covered only by the tattered, filthy remains of its shirt. She moved to fire when it spoke.

"Don't shoot," it said. "Please. I'm alive." The creature… the human… began to cry in short, hiccupping sobs, and she realized that he couldn't be much older than a schoolchild. His white blonde hair shook as he scrabbled at the dirt, trying to get away from the boot pressing down on his spine. "I'm alive," he said again, his voice shaking with grief, as though that simple fact was the most tragic thing a human being could ever be.

And these days, maybe it was.

She lifted her boot and knelt down next to him. "It's all right. You're safe now." She settled her hand on his shoulder. "What's your name honey?"

He lifted his dirt-streaked face and his haunted eyes made her flinch.

"Draco," he said. "Draco Malfoy."

xxx

Five Weasleys, Hermione Granger, and Harry Potter sat quietly in The Burrow's crooked sitting room with a piece of parchment resting on the unbalanced coffee table at the center of it. Ron was the first to break the fragile silence. "We can't take anyone else."

Letters came now only for one reason and thus it had remained unread once it had arrived. A survivor had been found and the Aurors were looking for a safe house in which to put them. Each letter almost invariably ended up feeding the flames in the fireplace. They all hated those letters. Their mere presence reminded them that there were souls still alive in a world that belonged to the dead, and they couldn't do anything for them.

Even now, they could hear fingernails scraping at the outside walls and if they looked toward the kitchen, they could see rotted, mutilated flesh pressed against the window, desperate to force its way in. Ragged fingers stripped to the bone slapped and pounded at the glass panes until the cacophonous sounds were as natural to the prisoners locked inside the house as their own breathing.

"Read it, Ron," his girlfriend prompted. "At least let's see if it's someone we know."

And they all know who she's thinking about in that moment. Perhaps it's Ginny that they've found in some faraway place that they hadn't yet searched, or maybe even George. The second youngest Weasley leaned forward, the threadbare armchair he was sitting in creaking as though it too were tired.

He read, his eyes widening slightly before he tossed it on the table with his eyes darting nervously toward Harry.

A long silence fermented between all of them before he finally said the name of the forsaken survivor. "Malfoy."

Fleur and Bill shifted uneasily on the sofa. Molly and Arthur glanced uncertainly at one another as a little girl, dead, pressed her pale blue face against the window.

"Tell them we have room."

All eyes looked at the raven-haired young man who had been, up to that point, eerily silent. In fact, he had been for weeks, ever since he'd been isolated from the world he'd tried to save. "Harry-" Hermione began carefully.

"Tell them."

He stood and walked out of the room, knowing that the people he had left in it thought that he had lost his mind.

He wasn't sure that they were wrong.

xxx

When Malfoy stumbled over their fire grate, Harry had to catch him by the elbows to stop him from falling over. "Poor dear…" Mrs. Weasley clucked sympathetically as the others stood back, as though moving too close would make them susceptible to the young man's misfortune, as though it were a disease... a contagion they could catch like the flu. She tossed a thin blanket over his similarly thin shoulders to preserve his modesty that his tattered clothes did not afford him.

Malfoy's clear grey eyes flitted around aimlessly, landing on each of them for a moment but without any signs of recognition. "Poor dear," Mrs. Weasley repeated. "Harry, take him upstairs and draw him a bath. Make sure he gets to his bed."

He led him up the stairs by the elbow and into the bathroom, directing him to sit on the edge of the tub. He twisted the taps, and Malfoy jumped, his eyes darting around the tiny, claustrophobic space as though he'd only just realized that he was somewhere he'd not expected to be. His gaze quickly lowered however, having apparently realized that it didn't matter where he ended up anymore. One hell was just the same as another.

"Malfoy." Harry received no reaction. "_Malfoy_." The blond man started and looked up with a vacant, childlike look in his eyes.

Harry helped him shrug off the blanket and the ruined remains of his shirt and trousers before sliding him into the hot water. The water turned murky almost instantly. He was filthy and covered with gashes, claw marks, and blackish blue bruises.

The man began to wash with jerky movements, as though he was imitating an action he might have seen done once before a very long time ago. Harry found it strange that Draco Malfoy, who had grown up with every luxury in the world, had been reduced to a state that was hardly better than that of the dead that lurched to and fro just beyond the thin walls of The Burrow.

It caught him off guard to realize that he even found it a little sad. It was like finding something beautiful broken and forgotten in a heap of filthy, stinking rubbish.

Harry turned away.

Once the water had turned too murky to be useful, he piled a towel and a pair of his own clothes and shorts next to the sink. "When you're done, put those on. They might be too big, but they're better than what you had." Malfoy, to his credit, didn't honor him with a response.

He emerged from the bathroom, dressed but with his shirt on backward. Harry couldn't imagine that telling him so would really do any good. "Feeling better?" Malfoy rolled his eyes to the ceiling and Harry was surprised to find that he was amused at the familiarity of the blond's haughty behavior.

They shuffled toward the bedroom, and Malfoy fell into bed with a soft moan of delight, having apparently not experienced the comforts a mattress could afford to a body in quite some time. He lay still for a moment until Harry was sure he'd gone to sleep, and he pulled the blankets up to his pointed chin.

"Potter." Harry's hand stopped mid-action in shock. "Where am I?"

"The Burrow."

"Oh. Am I alive?"

"Yes, Malfoy. You're alive."

He turned over and seemed to consider his answer for a moment. "That's a shame," he said to the wall.

He seemed to drift off to sleep for the time being and Harry backed away. "I know what you mean," he whispered to nobody before leaving the room. He closed the door behind him with a soft click.

xxx

"He's obviously in shock," Mrs. Weasley murmured upon hearing Harry's summation of the events upstairs.

"He may well have gone mad out there," her husband said.

"He's a Malfoy. He was _already_ barking…"

"Ronald." Hermione admonished, before glancing at Harry. "I'm not sure this is a good idea, Harry."

"It's too late," Harry informed her tiredly. "He's here now, and I'm going to take care of him."

"Harry-"

"It's too late," he repeated before standing to retreat to his own room. It was too late for everything. It was too late to save Ginny, it was too late to have the Aurors trained properly, and it was too late to save anyone else.

Everything was just too fucking late.

xxx

The dark-haired wizard entered Malfoy's room the next day to find him standing at the window, peering down at the dead masses below, their rotting, flailing flesh reaching for him. "Some nightmares don't end when you wake up," he murmured conversationally, glancing toward Harry. "I know you think I've gone mad."

"I think we all have," Harry said honestly. Malfoy laughed. "Are you hungry?" He slid the breakfast tray on the side table next to his bed, though Malfoy didn't reply.

"Malfoy… what happened to you?"

The blond turned to look at Harry, his eyes sunken in and haunted as though he hadn't slept at all. "The same thing that happened to everyone, Potter. The world ended and when the dust settled, I was left standing. They say we're the lucky ones, but I'm not sure I agree." He looked down and fiddled with the ragged sleeve of Harry's t-shirt. "Has anyone heard anything of my parents?"

Harry shook his head slowly.

"Of Pansy? Greg?"

Again, he shook his head.

Malfoy sighed and turned his face back to the window, his palm pressed against the glass as though trying to reach out to the dead. "Pity." He stayed silent for a moment, his eyes focused on the diseased faces below. Harry had given his life up for them once before, and now it was all for nothing. Now they were all worse than dead.

"And you're certain that I'm alive?"

"I'm certain."

Malfoy made a sound that was a cross between a sob and a laugh. "How do you know?"

Harry considered this for a moment. "Because I'm alive."

A pause. "And you're certain about that?"

He looked down at his hands. "Yes," he said. But he wasn't certain. Not really.

"Do you wish that you weren't?"

"No," Harry answered. But he wasn't sure about that either.

Not really.

Malfoy pressed his forehead against the glass, his grey, hollow eyes searching the faces of the poor souls below. "Why don't you put them out of their misery?"

"We don't have enough ammo." In fact, they didn't have enough of anything. Eventually, they'd run out. But none of them liked to talk about that.

"But you do have some," Malfoy mused, seemingly to himself. "Show me how to shoot tomorrow, Potter. I'm too tired today."

Harry nodded and backed out of the room. He somehow felt more sane than he had in a very long time.

xxx

"Right, so all you have to do is aim and pull the trigger. You're bound to hit one of them." The two had the window open in Draco's room with the rifle pointed down at the creatures below.

"Aim and pull the trigger," Malfoy repeated, his shaking hands holding up the gun while Harry supported it from the side. He was still too weak to be able to hold it up on his own, and Harry was slightly concerned that the kick would knock him off of his feet. But if it did, he was certain Malfoy deserved it for _something_, so he wasn't going to worry about it all that much.

Harry glanced at the blond. Scratch marks still marred his otherwise perfect cheekbones, running diagonally across his pale skin. He nodded down at the monsters. "See the little girl? The one with the blue bow?" Malfoy nodded. "Aim for her."

"Why?"

"Because I've a sense that she's done nothing to deserve this." Malfoy nodded again as Harry held the rifle steady. "Now," he whispered.

He pulled the trigger.

The kick did send him flailing backward and the rifle hit the floor with a loud thud, but Harry caught him by the elbows. Grey eyes looked around wildly as though he was just as lost as he had been when he'd first arrived two days prior before they found purchase on Harry's face, and relaxed again. "Did I get her?"

Harry took two steps to the open window and peered down to see the little girl's head cracked in half, and something brown oozing slowly out of her skull while the others milled around her, unaware, or perhaps merely uncaring, that one of their own had just been destroyed. "Yes." Malfoy was at his side in a moment, leaning out of the window to get a look himself.

He turned away with his back pressed against the wall next to it. "Are you sure I'm alive, Potter?" His face had gone sheet white and his lips were trembling.

"Yes Malfoy, I'm sure."

"You say that, but how do you know? You don't even know if you're alive. I saw you hesitate yesterday. Prove it, Potter. Prove that we're alive." His eyes slid over to meet Harry's, wild and perhaps even a little mad. "_Prove it_."

Harry slammed his shoulders against the wall and kissed him.

"Yes…" Malfoy said, his head tilted back and his eyes shut as Harry dragged his lips down his throat.

"Shut up," Harry said, pushing his hips into Malfoy's and groaning at the friction, his head dipping down to lean against the blond's shoulder. Malfoy merely grabbed onto his hips, hooked his fingers trough Harry's belt loops, and held him close, in case he'd entertained any notions to do the sane thing and move away. He probably should have at least _tried_ to.

But he didn't.

They rutted against each other desperately, their hands grasping and twisting in each other's clothes as though certain that they other would try to get away. Harry was equal parts terrified of what would happen if he did and what would happen if he didn't. If this was insanity, it was somehow soothing… reality had become so very tiring…

He wasn't ready to go back to it just yet. "Potter," the blond ground out, his slender fingers pulling at his cotton t-shirt. His hungry grey gaze caught Harry's and it said that he was his, all his, and he could do what he wanted with him. _Use me_, it begged, and god, Harry wanted to.

His teeth grazed Malfoy's jaw as their hips ground against each other, working each other into a frenzy. He was going to come in his pants and they hadn't even _touched _each other yet. "Are you…?"

"Yeah… oh god…" Harry slid his hand over Malfoy's mouth to soften his moans as his teeth sank into his still cloth-covered shoulder in an attempt to silence his own.

"Fuck," Harry whispered, before he came, his eyes clenched shut as he let himself drown in his own senses which were somehow both dulled and on fire. It was a paradox, but he loved it, and he knew right then that this would turn into an addiction that he might not ever be able to kick. It wasn't the sex alone… it was that the sex was with _Malfoy_, and a voice told him in the back of his head that it'd never feel like this with anyone else… not ever.

He blocked it out. It didn't matter because he just wanted to enjoy the fact that, in that moment, he felt _alive_.

Later, once they'd managed to lock and close the door, they tumbled onto Malfoy's bed together and with fumbling hands, pulled each other out of their clothes. They lay with their limbs tangled comfortably together as though spending a moment _not_ touching was out of the question. "Do you feel alive now?" Harry asked between kisses.

Malfoy seemed to consider his question for a moment, as though weighing the pros and cons of answering it honestly. But what did either of them have to lose if he did? Certainly not their pride, or even their spirit. Both of those things had gone a long time ago.

"Yes," he said, and Harry kissed him again.

xxx

They spent their days in bed together. If they weren't fucking, they were talking, and if they weren't talking, they were fucking. Harry couldn't get enough of Malfoy. He wanted to drink him in, to taste him on his tongue, and when he wasn't with him, he was waiting for his next hit.

"I don't like it," Hermione said.

"Why not?"

"Because he's Malfoy, Harry. I don't trust him. He'll stab you in the back as soon as you're not watching."

Harry merely smiled. "But he's had plenty of opportunities to do that already." She looked at him despairingly as he retreated back upstairs again with Malfoy's dinner on a tray in front of him.

But her words stuck with him, even when he had the blond back in his arms again, because there were moments when he thought she might not be wrong. After all, Hermione had never been wrong before and that counted for something. She was the one who'd told them to build up The Burrow, make it strong, make it unbreakable, even when the government was assuring them all that the Undead weren't a threat.

If she hadn't, it might be them pounding at that door with broken fingers and glassy, sightless eyes.

Malfoy pressed his lips against his throat. "You're quiet." When Harry didn't answer, he prompted him further. "Are you thinking about her?" It was obvious who he was referring to, but truth be told, Harry hadn't thought about her in a long time. Not really. And he couldn't even summon the energy to feel guilty about that.

"I still think about my parents. I need to find them."

That provoked a response. "What?" Harry leaned up on one elbow and looked down at Malfoy, who stared resolutely back up at him.

"I do."

"They're probably dead," Harry informed him callously, but Malfoy didn't blink.

"God, I hope so. But if they're not… if they've turned…" He turned his face away from Harry with a far away look on his face. "I need to put them to rest."

"_No_." Harry had shot upright, his hands pressing Malfoy's shoulders down into the mattress as though that act alone would keep him there forever. "No, I won't let you. You're here now, and I'm going to take care of you." Malfoy glanced at him with an unreadable expression, though Harry thought it a bit sad and even a little regretful. "We need each other," Harry added lamely. Desperately.

Malfoy shrugged. "It's dangerous to need anyone right now."

"But we do," he pressed.

Malfoy kissed him, his hand reaching up to cup Harry's cheek. "We do," he murmured soothingly. Then, he spoke a few whispered words that Harry barely registered but upon hearing them, wished that he hadn't.

"And that's the worst part."

Harry didn't want to know what Malfoy meant, so Harry didn't ask.

xxx

"Potter… Potter, wake up. They're gone."

Harry opened his eyes to see Malfoy's face looming over his. His eyes seemed unusually bright – they were generally a dull, storm grey but right then, they looked like molten silver. "Malfoy-"

"Get up! Come on, come look!"

Harry stumbled to the window and peered out into the clouded midst, blinking as though he thought it was merely the sleep in his eyes. "There's nothing there, Malfoy."

"Yes! Exactly! There's nothing there. They've all gone." Malfoy was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet now, looking at Harry expectedly like a child eager for praise.

"Malfoy," he began, unwilling to crush this unexpected bit of hope in an already hopeless world. "They always leave. They go away in the middle of the night and come back in the morning."

The blond frowned, his hand pressed against the window. "I thought…" He sighed and pressed his forehead to the cool glass. Harry bowed his head for a moment and slid a hand down the other man's back.

"When we go to sleep, they don't have any sounds to follow. Our heartbeats slow down." He nodded at the trees a short distance away from The Burrow and a few limping, moaning creatures emerging from them. "They always come back in the morning, no matter how quiet we try to be."

Harry moved in closer and tentatively pressed his lips against the back of Malfoy's neck. "I'm sorry. I thought you knew."

Malfoy remained where he was for a moment before turning back to Harry, his eyes dull and lifeless. "What are we doing awake so early?" he asked, his voice full of false cheer. "Take me back to bed, Potter."

xxx

Malfoy was different after that. He watched all of them more carefully, timing their movements and memorizing their habits. Harry saw his eyes flicker toward the door when Hermione and Ron passed by on their way to bed, or his head turn toward the the bathroom next door when Fleur turned on the water. Harry noticed all of those things, but he didn't know what they meant.

Once, when they were tucked into Malfoy's bed together in the early morning hours and the sunlight had just begun to seep into the floorboards, Harry had woken up to find Malfoy watching him. "Morning," he said calmly.

"See anything you like?" Harry asked with a small, sleepy smile. He did that now, sometimes – smiled. It was a strange feeling after going so long without.

"A few things." Malfoy leaned down and pressed a kiss against Harry's forehead. "Although I was mostly just checking to see if you have to work at making your hair look that atrocious or if it really is unintentional."

"Oh? Have you come to a conclusion?"

"It's completely accidental. I'm impressed." Harry grinned and rolled over to pull Malfoy's slim hips closer against him. They could spend hours like this, warming each other during the cool mornings and nights without ever growing restless or bored. It was as though they held each other in orbit now, and their strength was somehow interlinked. Before, he had felt as though all of the gravity had gone out of his world and that he was floating aimlessly in space without direction or any hope of knowing where he would end up in the future.

Now though, he felt as though he had something that might keep him in place, and he was loathe to ever let it go.

"Potter, I'm about to start doing something very frightening." Harry snorted and brushed his lips along his jaw.

"Oh?"

"I'm going to start talking about the future." The future was an unforgiveable subject that no one ever discussed, or talked about. The most Harry knew about it was that their supplies wouldn't last forever and therefore, neither would their comparatively safe existence in The Burrow.

"What's going to happen?" Malfoy's voice was a low whisper as his eyes pleaded with Harry to tell him the truth. His faith in Harry was apparent, and Harry once again felt as though someone's else's survival depended on him for the first time since the end of the war. Harry was his religion now and without it, he'd be faced with the horrible emptiness of nothing, of falling into the dark cataclysm of the pit they had been threatened with since the beginning of time.

Harry brushed a few strands of blond hair out of his eyes and ran his thumb along his jaw soothingly. "I don't know… but we'll be together."

Malfoy seemed placated, though his next words suggested otherwise. "I need to find my parents."

"Stop saying that."

"I do." Malfoy's gazed dropped away from Harry's, his pale eyelashes fluttering gently against his cheeks.

"I won't let you."

Malfoy smiled grimly. "Oh, I know that, Potter." Harry traces his fingertips over the blond man's lips and Malfoy kissed them tenderly… devotedly. "In the future, it'll be me and you." Harry hung onto those words as though they were the only things keeping him afloat. And in many ways, they _were_. Malfoy was too special, too intense to be in a desolate, defeated world like this, and being with him made him forget that such destruction was even possible when someone so beautiful still existed in it.

"Promise?"

Malfoy grinned and kissed Harry. "I promise."

xxx

Most beautiful things were fleeting. They lasted only a moment and then were gone, leaving behind only a memory and the knowledge that nothing will ever quite measure up. After finding something that extraordinary, everything would always be a mere shadow in comparison. The colors of the world would forever seem muted, as though that beautiful thing had illuminated all the whites and blocked out all the greys.

That was what it was like for Harry once Malfoy was gone.

He knew he'd gone as soon as he'd woken up one cold, February morning when the tracks left in the snow by the dead had frozen over, making their marks on the earth all the more apparent. He hadn't had to roll over and look to know it, but he'd done it anyway, and seeing the empty pillow next to him made his heart freeze in an endless winter.

Harry bit his knuckles to keep from crying out, because he didn't want the rest of the house to know that they'd been right about Malfoy all along. He'd been watching their movements so he could plan his escape, because he knew Harry would never let him leave in the middle of the day. He'd had to choose his moment carefully. He knew without looking that the gun he kept in his room would be missing too.

But he'd _promised_. He'd promised Harry they'd be together.

Harry stood shakily. It was barely light outside and the first lemon slice of the horizon was peeking up over the hill beyond the house. Outside the window, he could see the creatures dragging themselves toward the Burrow, though some seemed distracted by a movement in the trees.

He pressed his face against the glass panes, his hand pressed against the window, when a note lying on the sill caught his eye. His fingers scraped against the chipped paint for that one last shred of hope and clasped it tightly in his palm. He stayed like that for a long time before he finally dared to read it.

_I'll come back to you once I've found them._

_It's me and you, Potter. Maybe not right now, but it will be. I promise._

Harry bit down on his bottom lip and rested his forehead against the freezing glass, when he caught sight of what had been distracting the Undead from the house.

Malfoy. He was standing at the top of the hill looking just as haunted as the creatures that pursued him. He raised a hand when he noticed Harry and Harry pressed his palm against the window, as though trying to reach out to him. Malfoy let his fingers drop, as though releasing his grasp on the one thing that had proved to him that he was alive, and disappeared over the hill.

Harry slipped to the floor.


End file.
